Remembering A Soldier
by Badgergater
Summary: Jess Harper recalls a soldier he once knew.


Remembering A Soldier

By Badgergater

Season: Refers to S1 episode, The Pass, but takes place after the series, sometime after 1876

Summary: Jess Harper recalls a soldier he once knew.

Author's note: Thanks to Hired Hand for her always excellent beta skills.

It was a cold day when I rode out with Colonel Custer and his men.

It happened in the fall of that first year I lived in Laramie. There'd been an Indian uprising, an' both Slim an' me got called to duty with the Army, with me gettin' the assignment to scout with the Seventh Cavalry.

George Armstrong Custer was a name folks knew from way back in the war, when he'd made a name for himself as the boy general, on the Union side a'course. But he wasn't so famous then, as he'd be later, for bein' a fool and leadin' his men into an ambush up north in Montana Territory, along a river called the Little Bighorn. But I have to tell you that the other day, when I heard about what happened to him, I wasn't all that much surprised.

That's not to say that I didn't like the man, because if I'm honest, I did. Sure, he loved attention and dressed like an actor in some stage play, with fringed buckskins and fancy perfumed hair that would have marked most men for ridicule as a fop an' a dude. But Custer, it was plain, he loved bein' a soldier, and he had that kind of dash and flair that some men have, a thing that makes them leaders of other men. He could ride and he could shoot and there's no doubt in my mind that he was a brave man of a sort that ain't all that common. But he was a foolish man, too.

I guess I could reckon I was lucky, ridin' scout on that patrol of his back in '71, lucky that we didn't run into any big party of Indians because, though Custer was a man of courage, he was also a hasty one, the kind of thing that can get a man killed, takin' a lot of good men to the grave with him.

Which, of course, is what he proved a few years later.

I knew officers like Colonel Custer back during the war, men who would try the impossible because they just never reckoned that they could fail.

And that's a dangerous way of thinkin'.

I never had nothin' against them wanting to try; I just hated to see their like take other good men with them. A lot of good soldiers died that way, even when they saw the folly of it, because it was their duty; because they had pledged their honor; because there are times when a man gets his blood up and tries things that, if he took the time to think about 'em, he would know he shouldn't.

Sometimes, men do the impossible.

Mostly, though, they die in the tryin'.

That's the strange thing about us humans; we do things we know ain't the least bit sensible.

Some of us ain't got the brains to be scared, or leastwise cautious, when we ought to be.

I saw it during the war, men charging into certain death, knowin' their lives were forfeit, but goin' forward anyway.

Custer wasn't like that, not what I knew of him.

He was friendly enough and smart and confident; not usually bad things, except maybe in a cavalry officer leading men into war against superior numbers, or goin' up against canny fighters like the Sioux.

I rode scout for Custer's detachment for those few weeks in '71. Arrivin' back in camp late on a cold night, after spending days out on the trail, the Colonel invited me to share his fire. He gave me a few minutes to warm myself beside the flames, then asked for my report. He listened carefully to what I said, asked questions that showed me he was thinkin' through what I was tellin' him, and then real quick gave orders to his officers. They jumped to obey and I got up to leave, too, but he asked me to stay, handin' me a cup of coffee before settlin' back in his camp chair, and, to my surprise, asked me where I was from.

"Texas," I replied, appreciatin' the hot coffee.

He nodded. "And what brought you to Wyoming, Mr. Harper?"

"A good horse," I answered glibly.

He found that answer amusin', laughin' loudly and slappin' his knee. After that, he was real friendly with me, askin' me to ride beside him the next day and tell him about life in Texas and Wyoming, especially the wonders of the Yellowstone country, which he had heard of but found hard to believe. Of course, if I hadn't seen that steam a'blowin' up out of the ground with my very own eyes, I'd a'been a mite skeptical my own self.

"The Yellowstone… I'd like to see that, some day," he said, softly.

I wonder if he ever did.

I'd like to hope so; after all, he wasn't a bad man, just a short-lived one.

x-x The End x-x

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